Military medical supply chain management: pharmaceuticals, blood products and surgical sets

Q: How are controlled substances tracked in a deployed military environment?

Controlled substances — Schedule II–V opioids, ketamine, benzodiazepines, and other DEA-equivalent categories — require dual-signature receipt, issue, and waste verification at every transaction in the deployed supply chain. The medical logistics software maintains a running balance for each controlled substance at each facility, reconciled against a physical count at every shift change. Every transaction (receipt from supply, issue to patient, waste with witness, transfer to another unit) creates a timestamped, user-authenticated audit record. Discrepancies between the system balance and physical count trigger an immediate investigation workflow. At end of deployment, the system produces a complete chain-of-custody report for submission to the theater surgeon and supporting the DEA Form 222 equivalent accountability process.

Q: How long is the sterile shelf life of a surgical set after autoclave sterilization?

The sterile shelf life of a wrapped surgical set after autoclave sterilization depends on the packaging material, storage conditions, and the facility's validated shelf-life policy. In most military medical facility protocols, a double-wrapped set in an event-related sterility model is considered sterile until the packaging integrity is compromised — a torn wrapper, moisture ingress, or a failed chemical indicator constitutes an event. Fixed shelf-life policies typically specify 6 months for unwrapped rigid containers and 12 months for sealed peel-pouched instruments stored under controlled conditions. Military medical software tracks the sterilization date, autoclave cycle number, and assigned expiry date for each set, generating alerts when sets approach expiry and requiring a documented check of packaging integrity before each surgical use.

Q: How are pharmaceutical lot numbers tracked across the military supply chain?

Pharmaceutical lot tracking begins at the point of receipt from the medical supply depot, where each package is scanned and its lot number and expiry date recorded against the NSN (National Stock Number) and quantity. When stock is issued from a medical supply point to a subordinate facility, the lot number travels with the transfer record. At the subordinate facility, lot numbers are tracked at the bin level, enabling FEFO issue discipline and targeted withdrawal if a safety recall or quality alert is issued against a specific lot. In the event of an adverse drug event, the lot number allows the medical officer to identify all patients who received medication from the same batch and to locate any remaining units of the same lot across all facilities in the theater for immediate quarantine.

By Corvus Intelligence Engineering Team · About the team →

June 25, 2026 11 min read

The military medical supply chain is the one logistics domain where stockout is measured in lives rather than cost variances. A forward surgical team without packed red blood cells, ketamine, or sterile laparotomy sets cannot perform damage control surgery. A Role 2 pharmacy that has allowed morphine sulfate to expire has both a clinical and a legal problem. A blood refrigerator that lost power overnight and was never flagged as having done so may be holding product that should have been discarded. Managing Class VIII — the military supply category that covers all medical material — demands software capabilities that general-purpose military inventory management software does not provide: lot-level expiry tracking, controlled substance chain-of-custody, cold chain monitoring with medical-grade excursion rules, sterility lifecycle management, and patient-driven demand signals. This article examines how purpose-built military medical logistics software addresses each of these challenges across the Role 1 to Role 4 echelon structure.

Medical logistics across role 1–4 echelons

Military medical echelons define both the clinical capability of the facility and the depth of the supply chain supporting it. Class VIII — NATO's designation for medical material — flows from strategic stockpiles at Role 4 forward through a tiered distribution network that mirrors the patient evacuation flow in reverse. Understanding the echelon structure is the starting point for designing software that fits the actual logistics reality at each level.

Role 1 is the point-of-injury or battalion aid station level. It carries individual combat medic bags (IFAK/CLS kit), a small aid station stock of trauma dressings, haemostatic agents, analgesics, and in advanced configurations, 2–4 units of low-titer group O whole blood (LTOWB) in a portable field blood refrigerator. Inventory management here is minimal — a mobile app that can scan lot numbers, display expiry dates, and record consumption events offline, syncing when connectivity is available.

Role 2 encompasses forward surgical teams, medical companies, and Role 2-Enhanced facilities with damage control surgical capability. This echelon holds a materially more complex inventory: a forward blood bank (pRBC, FFP, LTOWB), a pharmacy with a range of controlled and non-controlled medications, a sterile supply section holding surgical instrument sets, and a logistics element managing resupply from the Role 3. Software at this level must handle the full Class VIII management cycle in an offline-capable rugged-tablet environment.

Role 3 is the field hospital — the regional medical hub for a theater of operations. It maintains the broadest Class VIII inventory, laboratory capability for blood grouping and crossmatching, a full pharmacy, and a central sterile supply department. Role 3 serves as the resupply node for all Role 2 facilities in its sector and as the primary point of integration between the field medical supply chain and the theater medical information system.

Role 4 is the definitive care hospital, typically in the home nation. It operates a civilian-standard medical supply chain but must interface with deployed systems to receive patient records, medication histories, and blood product transfusion records that travel with the casualty from the field.

Military medical supply doctrine distinguishes between push and pull resupply. Push delivers pre-configured packages to forward units on a schedule or trigger condition without waiting for a formal request — essential when Role 1 logistics staff lacks the bandwidth to generate accurate demand signals. Pull responds to explicit requisitions — used at Role 2-Enhanced and Role 3 where a medical logistics officer can manage the formal process. Most deployed supply chains use a hybrid: push for initial standup and MASCAL recovery, pull for routine sustainment.

Pharmaceutical expiry management

Pharmaceutical expiry is a daily operational problem in deployed military settings. Medications that arrive at a Role 2 pharmacy with 12 months remaining shelf life may still be on the shelf 9 months later if the operational tempo was lower than forecast. When expiry approaches, the medical officer faces three options: consume the product preferentially, redistribute it to a facility with higher demand, or initiate disposal. All three options require accurate, lot-level visibility across every facility in the sector.

Purpose-built military medical logistics software enforces FEFO (first-expired, first-out) discipline at the lot level. When a shipment of, say, tranexamic acid (TXA) arrives, each package is received against its NSN (National Stock Number), lot number, and manufacturer-stated expiry date. The software creates a lot record that tracks every unit of that batch from receipt through to final disposition. When TXA is issued from the pharmacy, the system defaults to the lot with the earliest expiry date — the FEFO lot — and requires an explicit override with a documented reason if the pharmacist selects a later-expiry lot instead.

Automated expiry alerts operate on configurable thresholds. A typical configuration uses three alert levels:

90 days: informational alert — the medical logistics officer is notified and the lot is flagged for consumption priority.
60 days: action alert — the system generates a redistribution recommendation if another facility in the network has demand that could absorb the stock before expiry.
30 days: urgent alert — the lot is highlighted in red on every inventory dashboard and appears at the top of the FEFO issue queue regardless of other product priorities.

When a pharmaceutical lot cannot be consumed before expiry, the disposal workflow is triggered. The software generates a disposal record capturing the NSN, lot number, quantity, expiry date, and reason for disposal. For standard non-controlled pharmaceuticals, this record is completed by the pharmacy officer and submitted to the theater medical logistics element. For controlled substances, disposal requires a separate, more rigorous process described in the next section. The disposal record is retained for audit and forms part of the end-of-deployment Class VIII accountability package.

Returnables — pharmaceuticals that can be sent back to the medical supply depot for reissue — are handled through a reverse logistics workflow. The lot-level record travels with the returned stock, allowing the depot to confirm the remaining shelf life and re-issue or quarantine the units accordingly. This workflow requires the medical supply chain software to integrate with defense ERP integration logistics platforms at the depot level to maintain continuity of the lot record across the handoff.

Controlled substance accountability

Controlled substances in a deployed military setting — Schedule II opioids (morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone), Schedule III agents (ketamine, buprenorphine), Schedule IV benzodiazepines (diazepam, midazolam), and equivalent DEA classifications — require an accountability standard that goes significantly beyond standard pharmaceutical tracking. The legal and operational consequences of a controlled substance discrepancy in a deployed environment are severe: investigations, command notifications, potential criminal proceedings, and the operational disruption of a facility temporarily unable to administer controlled analgesics or anaesthetics.

The accountability framework in deployed military operations mirrors the DEA Form 222 system for Schedule II substances and the perpetual inventory requirement for all controlled substance categories, adapted for the field environment. Software must enforce the following at every transaction:

Dual-signature receipt: two authorized personnel must authenticate the receipt of any controlled substance. The system requires two separate PIN or biometric authentications before posting the stock.
Issue-to-patient recording: every issue of a controlled substance is linked to a patient identifier and a clinical indication. Partial vials — common for opioid infusions — require a waste record with a witness signature for the unused portion.
Shift-change reconciliation: at every shift handover, the outgoing and incoming officers perform a physical count of each controlled substance and enter the count. The system compares this against the running balance. Any discrepancy, even a single unit, creates a mandatory investigation record.
Audit trail: every transaction — receipt, issue, waste, transfer, disposal — is timestamped, user-attributed, and immutable. The audit trail is exportable for military police investigation or inspector general review.

Transfer of controlled substances between facilities — for example, when a Role 2 pharmacy sends excess ketamine to a forward Role 1 aid station — requires dual-signature dispatch at the sending facility and dual-signature receipt at the receiving facility, with the quantity reconciled against the transfer document at both ends. The software tracks the controlled substance in transit as a pending transfer, preventing the sending facility from counting it as on-hand while it is still moving.

At end of deployment or end of mission, the system generates a complete controlled substance accountability report: opening balance, all receipts by lot, all issues by patient and date, all waste events with witness, all transfers by facility, and closing balance. This report must reconcile to zero discrepancy or document any investigated exceptions before it can be submitted to the theater surgeon for sign-off.

Blood product cold chain monitoring

Blood products impose the most demanding cold chain requirements in the military medical supply chain — not only because of the narrow temperature bands involved, but because a temperature excursion that goes undetected can result in a transfused unit with compromised efficacy or accelerated haemolysis, with no visible sign of the problem at the point of issue. Purpose-built cold chain monitoring military platforms address this through continuous sensor integration, automated excursion rules, and a mandatory review gate before any temperature-flagged unit can be issued.

Each blood storage asset — blood refrigerator, -30°C freezer for FFP, platelet agitator — is equipped with a primary digital temperature sensor connected to the unit's controller and at least one independent BLE temperature logger as a redundant monitor. The BLE loggers report readings at 2–5-minute intervals to the facility's medical logistics gateway, which writes every reading to a time-series data store with a millisecond timestamp. The gateway displays a live temperature dashboard for all monitored assets and triggers alerts when any reading falls outside the configured range for that asset type.

Temperature thresholds by product category:

Packed red blood cells (pRBC) and LTOWB: 1°C–6°C. Alert threshold: any reading above 6°C or below 0°C. Excursion rule: cumulative duration above 6°C exceeding 30 minutes triggers a medical officer review flag.
Fresh frozen plasma (FFP): stored at or below -18°C. Alert threshold: any reading above -10°C. Thawed FFP tracked separately with a 4-hour use-by clock from time of thaw.
Platelets: 20°C–24°C with continuous agitation. Alert threshold: any temperature outside 20°C–24°C, or agitator motor failure detected via current sensor. Shelf life: 5 days from collection.

During transport between facilities — Role 3 to Role 2, or Role 2 to a Role 1 with a portable blood refrigerator — a portable BLE data logger travels inside the transport container alongside the blood products. On arrival, the receiving medic's tablet downloads the logger's temperature record via BLE before initiating the receipt workflow. The blood management application processes the temperature history, applies the excursion rules for each product type in the shipment, and flags any unit associated with a temperature excursion. Flagged units enter a quarantine status: they remain in a holding location separate from issuable stock, and the system generates an alert requiring the duty medical officer to review the temperature log and decide whether to approve the unit for issue, hold it pending further assessment, or discard it. The receiving medic cannot bypass this gate — the system prevents a quarantined unit from appearing in the FEFO issue queue until the medical officer clears it.

Shipment temperature logs are retained indefinitely as part of the blood product custody record and are submitted to the theater haemovigilance database. In the event of a transfusion reaction, the temperature log allows the investigating officer to determine whether cold chain integrity was maintained throughout the product's life, narrowing the field of possible causative factors.

Surgical set sterility lifecycle

Surgical instrument sets — laparotomy sets, thoracotomy sets, orthopaedic fixation kits, vascular repair trays — are the most physically complex inventory item in the military medical supply chain. Each set contains dozens of individual instruments with a defined contents list. Sterility is the critical quality attribute: a set with a compromised sterile barrier is unusable until re-sterilized, which takes hours and consumes scarce autoclave capacity. Managing the sterility lifecycle across a Role 2 or Role 3 sterile supply department requires software that tracks the set as a single tracked entity, not a collection of individual items.

For each surgical set, the system maintains a sterility record containing:

Set name and unique set identifier (barcode-labelled on the outer wrap)
Contents list verified against the set card at last assembly
Autoclave machine identifier and sterilization cycle number
Sterilization date and time
Chemical indicator result (Class 5 or 6 integrator result recorded as pass/fail)
Assigned sterile expiry date (event-based or fixed shelf-life per facility policy)
Storage location (shelf, cabinet, emergency tray)
Pre-use packaging integrity check (mandatory before each surgical use)

Where the autoclave system supports electronic cycle record output — via RS-232, USB, or network integration — the medical logistics software can import cycle records automatically and link each cycle to the sets processed in that run. This eliminates manual transcription errors in the sterilization record, which are a common audit finding in sterile supply inspections.

Sterile expiry alerts operate similarly to pharmaceutical expiry alerts: the system generates notifications at configurable intervals before the assigned expiry date, prompting the sterile supply technician to either consume the set or schedule it for re-sterilization. A set that expires without being consumed or re-sterilized is automatically moved to a quarantine status and cannot be issued until its sterility has been re-established and a new sterility record created.

Set content verification — confirming that all instruments are present and functional after a surgical case — is recorded as a post-use check event. Missing instruments are flagged immediately, generating a missing instrument record and, if the missing item is a sharps (scalpel, needle), triggering a sharps injury investigation workflow. Instruments identified as damaged during the post-use check are removed from the set record and tracked through repair or disposal.

Forward push of medical supplies

Push resupply in the military medical supply chain depends on the ability to forecast demand without a formal requisition from the forward unit. In practice, this means modelling demand from two inputs: historical consumption rates at comparable facilities during comparable operational tempos, and casualty rate forecasts derived from operational planning assumptions.

Military medical logistics software supports push package design through a set composition module. A standard Role 2 sustainment push package — a pre-configured palletized load delivered every 72 hours under routine conditions — is defined as a template specifying NSN, quantity, and substitution rules for each line item. The template is calibrated against the historical consumption data for the receiving facility type and adjusted for current operational tempo indicators: movement orders, close-combat reports, and MEDEVAC frequency data. When the forward surgical team's reported casualty rate rises above a threshold — for example, more than three surgical cases in 24 hours — the software triggers an automatic upgrade from the standard push package to an enhanced push package with higher blood product quantities and a broader surgical consumable load.

The forward surgical team resupply trigger architecture typically operates on three conditions:

Time-based trigger: the standard sustainment push fires on a fixed schedule (every 24, 48, or 72 hours) regardless of consumption level, ensuring the facility never falls below minimum stock without a supply event.
Level-based trigger: an automated resupply request fires when any critical item category falls below a commander-defined threshold — for example, fewer than 6 units of pRBC, fewer than 48 hours of IV fluid supply, or fewer than 2 unused sterile surgical sets.
Event-based trigger: a MASCAL (mass casualty) declaration or a rapid consumption event detected by the software automatically generates a flash resupply request to the supporting Role 3 and theater medical logistics officer, bypassing normal requisition approval steps to compress the resupply cycle to the minimum achievable transit time.

Push package manifests are generated by the software as electronic packing lists with barcode labels for each line item, enabling the receiving facility to verify receipt by scanning rather than manual count — reducing receipt processing time from 20–30 minutes to under 5 minutes and eliminating the most common source of inventory discrepancy at the point of receipt.

Integration with theater medical information systems

The military medical supply chain does not operate in isolation from the clinical information systems that record patient encounters. In the U.S. military context, the Theater Medical Information Program – Joint (TMIP-J) suite integrates patient tracking, electronic health records, laboratory systems, pharmacy records, and medical logistics into a common data environment accessible across the theater of operations.

For the medical supply chain, the most operationally significant TMIP-J integration is the patient-driven demand signal. When a pharmacist or nurse administers a medication documented in AHLTA-Mobile — the forward-deployed electronic health record component of TMIP-J — that administration record can automatically deduct the dispensed quantity from the facility's pharmacy inventory record in the logistics module. This closes the loop between clinical consumption and inventory accounting without a separate manual transaction, eliminating the delay between actual use and inventory update that undermines FEFO discipline and resupply timing under high tempo.

Similarly, a surgical procedure documented in AHLTA-Mobile generates a consumable draw against the surgical supply inventory: sponges, sutures, drapes, and instrument set usage are recorded as procedure-linked consumption events. Blood product transfusions documented in the blood management module link to the patient's AHLTA-Mobile record, closing the blood product custody chain with a patient identifier and creating the transfusion event record required for haemovigilance reporting.

The Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support – Theater (DMLSS-T) module within TMIP-J serves as the theater-level inventory management and requisitioning system. Medical supply chain software at Role 2 and Role 3 facilities must be able to submit electronic requisitions (DOD Form 1149 or equivalent MILSTRIP transaction) to DMLSS-T, receive approval and shipping status updates, and post receipt events back to DMLSS-T when stock arrives. This bidirectional integration eliminates the dual-entry problem — where the same transaction must be manually entered in both the facility-level system and the theater-level system — and ensures that the theater medical logistics officer has an accurate real-time view of Class VIII inventory levels across all facilities in the sector.

Coalition operations present additional integration challenges. Partner nation medical facilities may use different national medical logistics systems that cannot connect directly to TMIP-J. In these cases, a data exchange gateway supporting the NATO Medical Corps interoperability framework and HL7 FHIR-based medical data standards provides a translation layer, allowing partner nation facilities to contribute supply status data to the theater picture and receive theater-level resupply coordination signals through a common interface.

Key insight: The largest source of preventable medication error and controlled substance discrepancy in deployed medical units is not intentional misuse — it is the gap between the clinical consumption record and the pharmacy inventory record. When administration is documented in the patient record but the inventory system relies on a separate manual deduction, the two systems drift apart within days of high-tempo operations. TMIP-J integration that automatically propagates AHLTA-Mobile administration records into the pharmacy inventory module eliminates this gap and keeps the controlled substance running balance accurate without additional workload on already-stretched medical staff.

Full-spectrum military medical supply chain visibility

Corvus HEAD delivers Class VIII inventory management, controlled substance accountability, cold chain monitoring, and TMIP-J integration in a single offline-capable platform built for Role 1–3 deployed medical operations.

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This analysis was prepared by Corvus Intelligence engineers who build mission-critical logistics and field applications for defense and government organizations. Learn about our team →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Class VIII in military logistics?

Class VIII is the NATO and U.S. military supply classification for medical material, including pharmaceuticals, blood and blood products, medical devices, surgical instruments, and dressings. It is subject to specific accountability, cold chain, and controlled substance requirements distinct from all other supply classes. Class VIII management is governed by theater medical logistics elements and coordinates through the medical supply chain from Role 4 strategic stockpiles down to Role 1 aid station level. Unlike most supply classes, Class VIII demand is patient-driven and highly variable — a unit that sees no combat may need almost nothing, while a unit sustaining a mass casualty event can exhaust a week's supply in hours.

What is FEFO and why does it matter for military pharmaceuticals?

FEFO stands for first-expired, first-out — an inventory issue discipline ensuring that the product with the shortest remaining shelf life is issued before later-expiry units. For military pharmaceuticals, FEFO is more critical than in commercial settings because field medical units carry life-saving medications — morphine, ketamine, tranexamic acid, IV fluids, antibiotics — with shelf lives that can expire during extended deployment. An automated FEFO system enforces issue order at the point of dispensing, generates expiry alerts at configurable thresholds (typically 90, 60, and 30 days before expiry), and logs every lot-level transaction to support waste reduction and end-of-deployment disposal accountability.

How are controlled substances tracked in a deployed military environment?

Controlled substances require dual-signature receipt, issue, and waste verification at every transaction. The medical logistics software maintains a running balance for each controlled substance at each facility, reconciled against a physical count at every shift change. Every transaction creates a timestamped, user-authenticated audit record. Discrepancies between the system balance and physical count trigger an immediate investigation workflow. At end of deployment, the system produces a complete chain-of-custody report for submission to the theater surgeon and supporting the DEA Form 222 equivalent accountability process.

What temperature range is required for blood product transport between Role 2 and Role 3?

Packed red blood cells and low-titer group O whole blood must be maintained at 1°C–6°C throughout transport. Fresh frozen plasma must remain at or below -18°C during frozen transport; once thawed it must be used within 4 hours. Platelets require 20°C–24°C with continuous agitation. During transport, BLE temperature loggers record readings every 5 minutes. On arrival at the receiving facility, the blood management application downloads the log and flags any temperature excursion before the receiving medic can accept the units — preventing a cold-chain-compromised unit from being silently accepted and issued.

How long is the sterile shelf life of a surgical set after autoclave sterilization?

Sterile shelf life depends on the packaging material, storage conditions, and the facility's validated policy. In most military medical facility protocols, a wrapped set uses an event-related sterility model — the set is considered sterile until packaging integrity is compromised by a torn wrapper, moisture ingress, or a failed chemical indicator. Fixed shelf-life policies typically specify 6 months for unwrapped rigid containers and 12 months for sealed peel-pouched instruments in controlled conditions. Military medical software tracks the sterilization date, autoclave cycle number, and assigned expiry date for each set, generating alerts when sets approach expiry and requiring a documented packaging integrity check before each surgical use.

What is the difference between push and pull resupply for medical supplies?

Push resupply delivers a pre-planned package of medical supplies to forward units on a schedule or trigger condition, without waiting for a formal request from the receiving unit. Pull resupply responds to an explicit demand signal. In military medical logistics, push is used for initial standup and sustainment of Role 1 and small Role 2 facilities where the logistics staff is too small to generate accurate demand signals, and for MASCAL post-event replenishment where waiting for requests would cause unacceptable delay. Pull is used at Role 2-Enhanced and Role 3 where the medical logistics staff can manage a formal requisition process. Modern medical logistics software supports both modes and can automatically switch between them based on operational tempo indicators.

What is TMIP-J and how does it interact with medical supply chain software?

TMIP-J (Theater Medical Information Program – Joint) is the U.S. military's suite of interoperable medical information systems for the deployed environment. It encompasses patient tracking, AHLTA-Mobile electronic health records, laboratory and pharmacy modules, and medical logistics (DMLSS-Theater in the field). A medical supply chain platform that integrates with TMIP-J can receive patient encounter data as a demand signal — a patient with a penetrating abdominal injury admitted to a Role 2 automatically generates a demand for specific surgical consumables and blood products — and can push supply transaction records to the DMLSS-Theater inventory record, keeping theater medical logistics synchronized with field facility actuals without manual data entry.

How are pharmaceutical lot numbers tracked across the military supply chain?

Pharmaceutical lot tracking begins at receipt from the medical supply depot, where each package is scanned with its lot number and expiry date recorded against the NSN and quantity. When stock is issued to a subordinate facility, the lot number travels with the transfer record. At the subordinate facility, lot numbers are tracked at bin level, enabling FEFO discipline and targeted withdrawal if a safety recall is issued against a specific batch. In the event of an adverse drug event, the lot number allows the medical officer to identify all patients who received medication from the same batch and to locate remaining units across all facilities in the theater for immediate quarantine.

What is the role of AHLTA-Mobile in forward medical supply management?

AHLTA-Mobile is the forward-deployed electronic health record component of TMIP-J, designed to operate on ruggedized tablets with intermittent connectivity. It captures TCCC data, medication administration records, and procedure notes at Role 1 and Role 2 level, syncing to AHLTA-Theater when connectivity is available. For medical supply chain management, AHLTA-Mobile provides the patient encounter data that drives actual demand signals: each medication administered is subtracted from the pharmacy inventory record; each surgical procedure triggers a consumable draw from the surgical supply record; each blood product transfusion closes the blood product custody chain with a patient identifier. This patient-driven demand signal is more accurate than time-averaged consumption models because it reflects actual clinical activity.

How does military medical supply chain software handle mass casualty events?

During a mass casualty (MASCAL) event, the medical supply chain faces a sudden surge in demand across multiple product categories: blood products, surgical consumables, analgesics and anaesthetic agents, IV fluids, and dressings. The software response has two phases. In the acute phase, the system activates a MASCAL resupply workflow that generates immediate flash requests to the supporting Role 3 and theater medical logistics element for pre-defined MASCAL push packages, bypassing normal requisition approval steps. In the recovery phase, the system reconciles consumption against pre-MASCAL inventory to identify stockouts, generates resupply requests to restore authorized stockage levels, and updates the demand history model to prevent the MASCAL surge from permanently distorting future demand forecasts.